"More than tools of navigation, maps—like all networks—can also express the political, cultural, and religious of there creators. During the Medieval era, Christian artisans mapped out the Earth according to the body of Christ, placing Jerusalem at its center. Only when Europeans began to explore overseas, and the need for navigational maps expanded, did cartographers begin to consistently place north at the top of the map. In 1943, Uruguayan modernist Joaquín Torres García challenged this orientation with Inverted America, flipping the standard map’s perspective to encourage South American pride. More recently, Ethiopian-American artist Julie Mehretu’s dynamic, multilayered paintings feature complex networks suggestive of abstracted maps and exploding cityscapes—a visual comment on the intersections of power and the built environment." https://www.artsy.net/gene/maps-slash-networks

Photo Credit: Newton Harrison & Helen Mayer Harrison

Thoughts:

Maps are a unit of measurement, what they measure is the real question? I often think maps and grids share a kind of ideological similarity. They encompass a false since of authority. There graphs, legend, and organization make it feel when you hold a map you hold the key. Maps are paradoxically both true and false. They guild us actuarially to a destination but they over look information. I use the map in my work for both truth seeking (away to actually show a form in space or to signify real data) and as a means of creating a false semblance of order.